Telephone calling centers represent the front line for customer service and marketing operations of many businesses. Typical calling centers receive or make hundreds of telephone calls per day with the aid of automated telephony equipment. With the Internet growing in importance as a way of communicating with customers, calling centers have also evolved to send and respond to electronic messages, such as e-mail or instant messages.
Calling centers often play a dual role of both sending outbound inquiries and answering inbound inquiries. For instance, calling centers use predictive dialers that automatically dial outbound telephone calls to contact individuals and then transfer the contacted individuals to agents when the individual answers the phone. Inbound telephone calls by individuals to the calling center are received by telephony equipment in the calling center and distributed to agents as the agents become available. Calling centers often combine outbound and inbound functions as a way to improve the talk time efficiency of calling center agents. Thus, for instance, when inbound calls have expected hold times that are acceptable, agents may be reassigned to place outbound telephone calls to help ensure that the agents are fully occupied.
One important goal for calling centers that receive inbound inquiries, such as telephone calls or electronic message inquiries, is to transfer the inbound inquiries to appropriate agents as quickly and efficiently as possible. A variety of telephone call receiving devices are commercially available to help meet this goal. One such receiving device is an automatic call distribution system (“ACD”) that receives plural inbound telephone calls and then distributes the received inbound calls to agents based on agent skill set, information available about the caller, and rules that match inbound callers to desired queues. Inbound calls may be routed to different queues based on rules and data, allowing a basic prioritization of inbound calls. For example, inbound callers seeking information about a new credit card account might be assigned to a different queue than inbound callers having questions about their account balances. Once assigned to a queue, calls in that queue are generally handled in a first-in-first-out basis. Thus, a caller's hold time generally depends upon the caller's depth in the queue.
Another type of call receiving device is a voice response unit (“VRU”), also known as an interactive voice response system. When an inbound call is received by a VRU, the caller is generally greeted with an automated voice that queries for information such as the caller's account number. Information provided by the caller is typically used to route the call to an appropriate queue. VRUs are used in conjunction with ACDs, but also improve performance of less complex receiving devices such as PBX systems.
As telephony migrates from conventional telephone signals to the use of Internet-based computer networks, voice over internet protocol (“VOIP”) will become an increasingly common platform for handling inbound telephone calls. One advantage of VOIP is enhanced access to account information for inbound calls with improved speed and accuracy. For example, conventional ACD and VRU systems collect caller information when inbound calls are received. One example of such caller information is automated number identification (“ANI”) information provided by telephone networks that identify the telephone number of the inbound call. Another example is destination number identification system information (“DNIS”) which allows the purpose of the inbound call to be determined from the telephone number dialed by the inbound caller. Using this caller information and account information gathered by a VRU or ACD, conventional calling centers are able to gather information on the caller and provide that information to the agent. The use of VOIP improves the integration of data and telephony by passing both data and telephony through a network with internet protocol and by combining voice inquiries with electronic message inquiries, such as e-mail. One example of such integration is the Intelligent Contact Management (“ICM”) solution sold by CISCO Systems, Inc. Another example is the integrated response systems available from eShare Technologies, described in greater detail at www.eShare.com, now known as Devine, Inc. at www.devine.com.
Although telephone receiving devices provide improved distribution of inbound telephone calls to agents, the receiving devices are generally not helpful in managing hold times when the number of inbound calls exceeds the agent answering capacity. For instance, customers tend to make inbound calls for service at similar times. A large volume of inbound calls tends to lead to longer wait times during popular calling periods resulting in customer dissatisfaction. As a consequence, during periods of heavy volumes and long hold times, a greater number of inbound callers hang up or “silently” close their accounts by seeking other service providers with better service. Another example of excessive hold times affecting the behavior of inbound callers occurs with telemarketing. The volume of inbound calls in a marketing operation tends to increase dramatically shortly after a television advertisement is aired. Extended hold times result in a greater number of customer hang-ups and lost sales.
The problem of wait time is often exacerbated by customers making inbound inquiries who tend to seek discussions with operators even when automated self-service will provide answers to their inquiries. For instance, a customer making a balance inquiry typically is able to obtain balance information from a VRU without operator assistance. However some customers select an operator option to obtain this information, resulting in unnecessary use of operator resources. While this is generally acceptable for customers who are particularly valued by the service provider, excessive use of operator resources by low value customers tends to increase wait times for all customers, resulting in poor service for higher valued customers.